VOL. XVI, NO. 7

Pretend for a moment that you are a person who enjoys photographing things. One day you sit down and spread all of your pictures in front of you.

You study the pictures and realize that even though you have many different subjects, they all seem the same. Being an explorer and experimenter, you want to find a new aspect of photography.

What should you do? One suggestion would be to enroll in photography here at Maine West. That would solve your problem for you.

Mr. Terrance Bragiel introduced a new aspect of photography to his Photo I classes.

"It's a simple technique. Instead of reproducing exactly what the photographer sees, he reproduces it in an abstract way," he says.

One method his students used in abstracting their pictures was by taking two identical prints, cutting them into quarter‑inch strips, and numbering each strip the same as the other picture's strip.

They then took the first strip of each picture and mounted them next to each other. They did the same thing for each of the other strips. Some students reversed the strips or mixed them up, thereby creating different abstractions.

"Not all images work," Mr. Bragiel says. "If you try to use a tree or a lamp post, the finished product will just be an expanded version of the original photo. With this assignment, we try to break out of the conventional ways of making a picture. Photography should not be restricted to one view of a subject. By combining several photographs, ordinary objects take on strange, new dimensions."